“It was at Valparaiso, and I made my way across the continent to Buenos Ayres. “I forget now what took me to Bristol: but there I was one day when I happened to see--what do you think?--a girl--sixteen--I a stripling of nineteen, or so--but she most precocious, spoke like a woman--a grating in a wall between us. Ah, well, God is good, and His Mercy endureth for ever. But she said it could never be--she a Jewess: though that, by the way, is nonsense, for she is a Jewess, and a Parisienne, and a Hindoo, and a Negress, and a Japanese, and the man who marries her will have a harem. My friend, I have seen her this very night!” He was silent. Suddenly he broke out: “I came home raving! The old man was scared out of his wits by my frenzy--I drank like ten men--in a month was the terror of Westring. One midnight, going home through the beech-wood--I don't know if you have noticed a hollow elm-tree which stands to the right of the path?” “I think I have”, said Loveday. “We shall pass near it presently; and at the moment when we approach it, I shall feel a little thrill in my back: always it is so with me. But I was saying: that midnight, as I passed the tree, drunk as I was, I saw a naked black man with a long beard run out; I took to my heels; he was after me; till I reached the bridge, when I stopped, faced him, fired a blow into his eyes, and he vanished. “During the week I continued to see apparitions. My groans were heard in the farm-yard: Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me! I was visited by the Methodist preacher at Thring; and finally I found solace: I became a class-member, a leader, a local preacher. “For some time I have been conscious of dissatisfaction among the people with my preaching, who say that my God 'is not a personal God', and that my Christianity is 'rum stuff': I am therefore meaning to give it up. But I still preach every second Thursday night. “It was about that time that, by accident, I found out the power of my hand to cure headache, and things like that, and the sensation among these villagers was enormous, I can tell you, six years ago; now they come to be touched without the slighest sense of the unusual. But what I have done well in was--the farming. I knew little of agriculture--” At this point they turned into the lane to Westring: and Loveday went with him a little beyond Priddlestone to see the fatal elm. VIII THE METEOR The next morning, after breakfast, Hogarth went down old Thring Street, and spent a penny for a note-book to contain the signatures of his association. But this was no day for interest in that scheme: for under the projecting first-floor of the paper-shop were newspaper placards bearing such words as: THE EARTH IN DANGER SHALL WE PERISH TO-NIGHT? and Hogarth was soon bending in the street over a paragraph, short--but in _pica_.